8.1. TIMELINE
8.1.1 The
revolutionary period (1776-1814)
8.1.1.1 The American revolution (1776-1787)
1773, 16 of
December Boston Tea Party.
1776 The 4th of July. The Declaration of
Independence.
1777
October 17. First victory of the rebels at Saratoga. In november
the members of the Second Continental Congress approve the Articles of
Confederation.
1778 The government of Louis XVI signs a treat
of Alliance with the rebels, represented by Benjamin Franklin.
1781 Surrender of England’s General Cornwallis at
Yorktown.
1783 September 3. Signature of the Peace of
Versailles.
1787
September 17. Approval of the federal Constitution by the Continental Congress.
(Ratification pending by the states, completed by 1789).
8.1.1.2
The French Revolution (1789-1799)
The origins of the Revolution (May to October
of 1789)
1789
5 May. Opening of the Estates
General.
17 June. The Third Estate is
transformed into a National Assembly.
14 July. The Storming of the
Bastille. First popular revolution.
6 October. The people of Paris force
the royal family to flee from Versailles to Paris. The Constituent Assembly
also moves. Second popular revolution 26 August. Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen
The stage of the constitutional monarchy (10
October, 1789 - 10 August, 1792)
1789 10
October. The Constituent Assembly grants the king a new title: “Louis, by the
grace of God and constitutional law, King of the French.”
1790 14
July. Celebration of the Federation. Origin of the French
1791
20-21 June. The Flight to Varennes.
The king's attempt to flee France is foiled.
3 September. Approval of the first
French Constitution.
1 October. Opening of the
Legislative Assembly.
1792
20 April. The Legislative Assembly
declares war on Austria.
10 August. Third popular
insurrection. The mob overruns the Tuileries Palace. The king and his family
are jailed.
The establishment of the first French Republic:
the stage of the Convention (September of 1792 - October of 1795)
1792
2 - 6
September. Elections to the Convention.
20
September. First military victory of revolutionary France at Valmy.
22
September. Abolition of the monarchy and proclamation of the “republic.”
1793
21 January.
The execution of Louis XVI.
February. First
coalition of European monarchies against
revolutionary France.
24 June.
New French Constitution (Constitution de l' An II). Universal masculine suffrage
is established. It will be a “virtual” text, its application suspended by the
state of emergency declared.
24
November. Implantation of a revolutionary calendar (Fabré d' Églantine) as a
measure of “de-Christianization.”
1794
January. Robespierre seizes power (which he maintains
until July).
27 July (9
Termidor, An II). The Thermidorian
Reaction. Moderates and centrists arrest
and execute Robespierre and other “terrorists.”
22 August.
Third French Constitution (L' An III).
The second stage of the First French Republic:
the Directory (October of 1795 - November of 1799)
1796 April.
The Conspiracy of Equals (Babeuf).
1798 5 September. The Jourdan Law enacts
obligatory military service for unmarried men ages 20 to 25.
8.1.1.3
The Napoleonic Period (1799-1815)
1799
9 November.
Napoleon seizes power through a coup d ' état.
25
December. The Year VII Constitution (1799) enters into force.
1802 2 August. French electors approve of
Napoleon becoming sole consul, for life. Two days later the Constitution of the
Year X is approved (4 August, 1802).
1804 18 May, 1804 (28 Floréal, An XII). The Senate
approves a new constitution under which the government of the Republic is
handed over to Napoleon as “Emperor of the French.” The Constitution is ratified by plebiscite
on November 6, 1804.
1805 2
December. Battle of Austerlitz. This victory marks the zenith of Napoleon’s
military glory
1808 2
May Madrid rebels against Napoleon
troops. Beginning of the Independence War.
1812
June. Napoleon invades Russia in
command of 700,000 men.
December. Napoleon withdraws from
Russia in defeat.
1814
31 March. Marshals force Napoleon to
abdicate.
3 April. The Senate removes Napoleon
from office.
4 June. Louis XVIII grants the
French a charte.
1815
1 March. Napoleon disembarks in
France.
18 June. Napoleon is defeated at
Waterloo.
22 June. Napoleon’s second
abdication.
14 October. Napoleon reaches St.
Helena in the English warship Northumberland.
8.1.2 Spain from 1779 to 1814
8.1.2.1
Reign of Charles III
1779-1783 Spain send money, weapons and munitions for
helping American rebels against British armies.
1783 Treaty
of Versailles. After the independence of the United States Spain recovers from
Great Britain East and West Florida, the coast of Nicaragua, Honduras
(Mosquito’s coast) and Campeche and the island of Minorca.
8.1.2.2
Reign of Charles IV
1789 The beginning of the French Revolution makes Floridablanca Spanish prime minister to stop
reforms and establish censorship and a reactionary policy to counteract
revolutionary propaganda.
1792 15 of November. Manuel Godoy prime minister
of Spain.
1793 Spain declares war to the French
Convention after the beheading of Louis XVI.
1795
22 of
July Peace of Basel. Spain accepts the
French regime after losing the war.
27
october Treaty of San Lorenzo
(Pinckney’s Treaty). Sapins guarantees the United States rights on the
Mississippi River.
1796 Treaty of San Ildefonso. Spain signs an Alliance with revolutionary France
and declares war to Great Britain.
1802 Peace of Amiens. Spain recovers definitely Minorca
from Great Britain. Reinforcement of
the alliance with France.
1805 21 october. Naval Battle of
Trafalgar. The Spanish
and French fleets are destroyed by Almiral Nelson.
1807
Treaty of Fontainebleau. Godoy authorizes Napoleon to cross Spanish
border with an army to invade Portugal.
8.1.2.3
War of Independance -Peninsular War- (1808-1814)
1808
19 of March. Mutiny of Aranjuez against Godoy. Charles
IV abdicates on his son Ferdinand VII.
2 of May The people of Madrid rebels against French
troops of Murat.
5 of
May Ferdinand VII and Charles IV
abdícate of the Spanish throne on Napoleon. He cedes it to his brother Joseph.
7 of
July Approval of Bayone’s Statute, first
Spanish written constitution.
21 of
July Battle of Bailén. A Napoleon’s army
is defeated for the first time.
September
25 The anti-Napoleonic Spain names a
provisional government (Junta Central Suprema).
November to
December Napoleon come to Spain
and conquers Madrid.
1809 December: The city of Gerona
surrender to a French after seven months of fierce resistance.
1810 24
september: Antinapoleonic Spain
representatives meet in extraordinary Cortes in Cadiz.
1812
19 of March. The Cádiz Cortes approve a
constitution for anti-napoleonic Spain.
July-November Napoleon is defeated in Russia.
1813 June:
French troops are heavily defeated in Vitoria.
1814
2 of
February The Cortes approve a decree
forcing Ferdinand VII to accept the 1812 constitution.
4 of
may Ferdinand VII reestablish Absolute
monarchy in Valencia and annuls the constitution and all legislation approved
by the Cortes.
8.2. SOME WORDS
Boston Tea Party
Declaration of Independence
Continental Congress
Articles of Confederation
Peace of Versailles
Federal Constitution
Ratification
Bill of Rights
FRENCH REVOLUTION
Estates General
Third Estate
Bastille
Federation day
National Assembly
Constituent Assembly
Legislative Assembly
Flight to Varennes
Valmy
First Republic
Convention
Thermidorian Reaction
Directory
Consulate
Empire
Charte (Louis XVIII)
SPAIN FROM 1779 TO 1814
Peace of Basel
Trafalgar (Battle of)
Treaty of Fontainebleau
Mutiny of Aranjuez
"Juntas" of defence
Junta Central Suprema
Bayone's Statute
Cortes (Cádiz)
Constitution (Cádiz)
Carbonari
8.3 SOME QUESTIONS
1. Why does start the American Revolution
against British rule? Think of a legal reason.
2. How does react Spain to the American
rebellion? Why?
3. What happens in Versailles on the 17 of June
of 1789? Why this event is constitutionally essential
4. What do French people celebrate of July 14?
5. What is the difference between the
Constituent and a Legislative assemblies?
6. When and how France turns form a
Constitutional monarchy to a Republic?
7. What are the essential periods of the French
Revolution (1789-1799)?
8. Why is formed the first European armed
coalition against Revolutionary France in 1793?
9. What is the consequence of the
constitutional consequence for France of the approval of the third Napoleonic
constitution in 1804?
10. How does Spain react to the French
Revolution? Think about what happens before and after 1795.
11. Why the
Independence War or Peninsula War (1808-1814) has revolutionary consequences in
Spain from a constitutional point of view?
8.4 TEXTS
1. The tax
revolt as origin of the American revolution
The need to
quell an Indian rebellion gave the British government the perfect excuse to maintain
a small standing army in the 13 colonies for the first time. In addition, in order to better control the
governors of the various colonial territories George III decided that they were
to be paid directly by the Crown instead of being compensated by the different
colonial assemblies, as had been the previous practice.
This
obviously augmented the cost of maintaining the colonies for the Crown, which
sought to pass the expense on to the colonists.
To achieve this it first severely repressed smuggling in order to
increase revenue from customs duties.
Next, the Westminster Parliament voted to levy a series of indirect
taxes upon the colonists, who responded by rejecting the new taxes, arguing
that as British subjects, and according to the constitutional principles of the
United Kingdom, they were not obligated to pay any tax which they had not
approved. As the American colonists had no representatives in the Westminster
Parliament, they asserted, this body had no right to impose taxes on them.
The unrest created by the “tax dispute” would
spark specific incidents which, when exaggerated by the press, exacerbated
tensions between London and the colonists.
In 1770 occurred what the colonists called the “Boston Massacre,” an
incident in which four protestors were killed by British soldiers who had been
harassed in the street. In 1773 the
incident known as the “Boston Tea Party” took place when a group of colonists
disguised as Indians threw some 340 chests of tea overboard from a British ship
which had just docked in Boston Harbor. The act was intended to protest the
king’s plan to monopolize this product . The
incident so infuriated George III that he annulled the colony of
Massachusetts’ “constitution ” and
closed Boston Harbor until the people had defrayed the cost of the lost tea.
2. The American Revolution as a rupture with the
Old Order
While
European historians tend to view the colonists’ war against England mainly as a
struggle for independence, American historians emphasize its “revolutionary”
nature. The colonists, in their view, not only rebelled against their king but,
by virtue of the Declaration of Independence of 1776, created a new state
inspired by Enlightenment principles and based on a social contract endorsed by
the delegates of the states gathered in a series of congresses.
The very idea of a congress as a meeting
called to discuss issues of common interest was in itself already profoundly
novel. In the case of the United States
this assembly was essential because each colony had its own system of
government and, thus, constituted a kind of embryonic state. In fact, the
congress was the essential instrument of
the process which would give rise to the new United States of America. The 13 colonies, having became independent
states, followed the procedure of meeting in a constituent assembly in which representatives of the former colonies
created and approved the texts for state constitutions. The English had some constitutional texts,
such as the Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights of 1689, but they never adopted a
comprehensive legislative text governing the state’s functions. Therefore, by employing written constitutions
the thirteen new American states began a new era in the history of western
public law. Through constituent assemblies
the states drafted their own constitutions setting down their organization and
government principles.
It must be
observed that each state’s constitutional process very much affected by the
precedent of each colonial charter, which helps one to understand how each new
state was able to draw up a constitution so quickly: they closely followed their own traditions of
self-government from the colonial era.
All of them featured an elected assembly, a Governor and a court
system. Generally the power of the
governor and the judges was strictly limited, while the legislative assembly
was the most powerful body, as it was the institution directly advocating for
the citizens’ interests.
The
constitutions, in addition, also generally ended up including bills of rights
which protected civil liberties against the powers of the new states. The first was the Virginia Declaration of
1776, which had a major impact on all the subsequent bills of rights. The Virginia document, then, preceded the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen approved by the French
constituent assembly in 1789, and the U.S. federal Bill of Rights of 1791. It
should be emphasized that these declarations of fundamental rights have
constitutional status, making them inviolable by the government. This, however, was not true of the French
Declaration of 1789, which had merely
declarative value.
3. From
voting by estate to one man, one vote: the rebellion of the Third Estate and
origin of the French revolution
In order to
bend the will of the sovereign and his minister it was necessary for the three
estates to unite and act in unison. This would prove to be very difficult, as
was evident the following day (6 May) when the nobility and the clergy refused
to accede to the patriots' proposal that the traditional ceremony confirming
the powers given to each representative and the legality of their election be
held in one chamber, in the presence of the representatives of the three
classes. The nobles were determined to defend the perpetuation of the
traditional practice in which the three classes deliberated separately and
voted in blocks as estates. The clergy was less adamant on this point, with
some of its members clearly in favor of accepting the Third Estate's proposal.
Their flexibility led to what would be a prolonged debate on the issue. As
discussions dragged on for more than a month without any agreement being
reached, the “patriots,” encouraged by Father Sieyes, decided to act
unilaterally in order to secure what they had proposed.
On 17 June,
1789 the representatives of the Third State concluded that, as they represented
“96 percent of the nation,” they alone sufficed to constitute the National
Assembly and claim total sovereignty with regards to fiscal affairs. This act had
immediate consequences because once the clergy heard of this development they
unanimously voted to join the Third Estate, leaving the nobles isolated.
4. The forming
of the first French Constituent Assembly 27 June of 1789
The
unflinching stand taken by the representatives of the Third Estate bent Louis
XVI's will. On 27 June he agreed to yield and ordered the representatives of
the nobility and the clergy to united with the representatives of the people to
form a single estate assembly in which
all individual votes would be counted. The king's decision was “revolutionary”
as it marked the end of the system employed by the Estates General ever since
1302, when it had arisen from a thoroughly feudal society, a development which the representatives wished
to make perfectly clear, on that very day establishing themselves as a
Constituent Assembly and beginning to discuss the task of drafting a
constitution.
The
Constituent Assembly held its sessions between 27 June, 1789 and 30 September,
1791. This period spanning two years and three months was without any doubt the
most crucial of the entire revolutionary era, as during it the legislative
measures were adopted which most contributed to changing France forever. From
the point of view of public order the years of the Constituent Assembly and
those of the Legislative Assembly (1791-1792) were relatively calm (at least
compared to the following period, from 1792-1794) as, despite the popular
rebellions of 14 July and 6 October, 1789 the Assembly managed to maintain public order.
5. The
“juntas” and the forming of a constituent power in Spain
In the
Napoleonic era, junta (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxunta])
was the name chosen by
several local administrations formed in Spain during the Peninsular War as a
patriotic alternative to the official administration toppled by the French
invaders. The juntas were usually formed by adding prominent members of society,
such as prelates, to the already-existing ayuntamientos (municipal councils).
The juntas
of the capitals of the traditional peninsular kingdoms of Spain styled
themselves "Supreme Juntas," to differentiate themselves from, and
claim authority over, provincial juntas. Juntas were also formed in Spanish
America during this period in reaction to the developments in Spain.
Realizing
that unity was needed to coordinate efforts against the French and to deal with
British aid, several supreme juntas—Murcia, Valencia, Seville and Castile and
León—called for the formation of a central one. After a series of negotiations
between the juntas and the discredited Council of Castile, which initially had
supported Joseph I, a "Supreme Central and Governmental Junta of Spain and
the Indies" met in Aranjuez on 25 September 1808, with the Conde de
Floridablanca as its president. Serving as surrogate for the absent king and
royal government, it succeeded in calling for representatives from local
provinces and the overseas possessions to meet in an "Extraordinary and
General Cortes of the Spanish Nation," so called because it would be both
the single legislative body for the whole empire and the body which would write
a constitution for it. By the beginning of 1810, the forces under the Supreme
Central Junta's command had suffered serious military reverses—the Battle of
Ocaña, the Battle of Alba de Tormes—in which the French not only inflicted
large losses on the Spanish, but also took control of southern Spain and forced
the government to retreat to Cádiz, the last redoubt available to it on Spanish
soil. (See the Siege of Cádiz.) In light of this, the Central Junta dissolved
itself on 29 January 1810 and set up a five-person Regency Council of Spain and
the Indies, charged with convening the Cortes. Therefore the system of juntas
was replaced by a regency and the Cádiz Cortes, which established a permanent
government under the Constitution of 1812.
6. The
Cadiz Constitution of 1812 (La Pepa)
Retreating
before the advancing French and an outbreak of yellow fever, the Supreme Central
Junta moved to Isla de León, where it was protected by the British Royal Navy,
and abolished itself, leaving a regency to rule until the Cortes could convene.
The origins
of the Cortes did not harbor any revolutionary intentions, since the Junta saw
itself simply as a continuation of the legitimate government of Spain. The
opening session of the new Cortes was held on 24 September 1810 in the building
now known as the Real Teatro de las Cortes. The opening ceremonies included a
civic procession, a mass, and a call by the president of the Regency, Pedro
Quevedo y Quintana, the bishop of Ourense, for those present to fulfill their
task loyally and efficiently. Still, the very act of resistance to the French
involved a certain degree of deviation from the doctrine of royal sovereignty:
if sovereignty resided entirely in the monarch, then Charles and Ferdinand's
abdications in favor of Napoleon would have made Joseph Bonaparte the
legitimate ruler of Spain.
The
representatives who gathered at Cádiz were far more liberal than the elite of
Spain taken as a whole, and they produced a document far more liberal than
might have been produced in Spain were it not for the war. Few of the most
conservative voices were at Cádiz, and there was no effective communication
with King Ferdinand, who was a virtual prisoner in France. In the Cortes of
1810-1812, liberal deputies, who had the implicit support of the British who
were protecting the city, were in the majority and representatives of the
Church and nobility constituted a minority. Liberals wanted equality before the
law, a centralized government, an efficient modern civil service, a reform of
the tax system, the replacement of feudal privileges by freedom of contract,
and the recognition of the property owner's right to use his property as he saw
fit. Three basic principles were soon ratified by the Cortes: that sovereignty
resides in the nation, the legitimacy of Ferdinand VII as king of Spain, and
the inviolability of the deputies. With this, the first steps towards a
political revolution were taken, since prior to the Napoleonic intervention,
Spain had been ruled as an absolute monarchy by the Bourbons and their Habsburg
predecessors. Although the Cortes was not unanimous in its liberalism, the new
Constitution reduced the power of the crown, the Catholic Church (although
Catholicism remained the state religion), and the nobility.
The Cortes
of Cádiz worked feverishly and the first written Spanish constitution was
promulgated in Cádiz on 19 March 1812. The Constitution of 1812 is regarded as
the founding document of liberalism in Spain and one of the first examples of
classical liberalism or conservative liberalism worldwide. It came to be called
the "sacred code" of the branch of liberalism that rejected the
French Revolution, and during the early nineteenth century it served as a model
for liberal constitutions of several Mediterranean and Latin American nations.
It served as the model for the Norwegian Constitution of 1814, the Portuguese
Constitution of 1822 and the Mexican one of 1824, and was implemented with
minor modifications in various Italian states by the Carbonari during their revolt of 1820 and 1821.
As the
principal aim of the new constitution was the prevention of arbitrary and
corrupt royal rule, it provided for a limited monarchy which governed through
ministers subject to parliamentary control. Suffrage, which was not determined
by property qualifications, favored the position of the commercial class in the
new parliament, since there was no special provision for the Church or the
nobility. The constitution set up a rational and efficient centralized
administrative system for the whole monarchy based on newly reformed and
uniform provincial governments and municipalities, rather than maintaining some
form of the varied, historical local governmental structures. Repeal of
traditional property restrictions gave liberals the freer economy they wanted.
The first
provincial government created under the Constitution was in the province of
Guadalajara. Its deputation first met in the village of Anguita in April 1813,
since the capital Guadalajara was the site of ongoing fighting.
(From
Wikipedia)
